CPG marketing is rarely quiet. There are always promotions to support, retailers asking for more, new SKUs launching, packaging updates, digital campaigns, shopper programs, social content, trade spend negotiations, and internal decks being built at speed.
From the outside, it appears to be motion. From the inside, it often feels like survival.
The uncomfortable truth is that busy marketing can still be ineffective marketing.
Most CPG leadership teams do not wake up thinking their marketing is broken. They assume it is “mostly working,” that next season will be smoother, and that with a little more budget or better execution, things will click. But when we audit CPG organisations, the issue is rarely effort. It is clarity.
Here are five warning signs we see repeatedly when CPG marketing is not pulling its weight, even though everyone is working hard.
1. Retailers Ask for “More Support” But No One Can Show What Worked Last Time
This is one of the earliest and clearest signals.
A buyer asks for additional digital support, a bigger shopper program, or more promotional investment. The brand team scrambles to respond. Slides are built. Ideas are proposed. Budgets are shifted.
Then someone asks a simple question.
“What did we do last time, and what actually worked?”
That is usually where things get uncomfortable.
- Performance data is scattered across agencies, platforms, and inboxes
- Results are framed as activity, not outcomes
- Learnings are anecdotal rather than documented
- No one has a clean, confident summary ready
If a retailer asked for proof that last season’s campaign drove velocity, distribution, or basket size, could you send something you would be proud of within 24 hours?
When CPG marketing works, it builds credibility with retailers. When it doesn’t, marketing becomes a cost of entry rather than a growth driver. The team ends up reacting instead of negotiating from strength.
This is not a tooling problem. It is a systems problem.
2. Every Season Feels Like a Scramble
CPG teams often accept chaos as normal.
Seasonality, retailer calendars, supply constraints, and internal approvals all play a role. But when every season feels rushed, reactive, and stressful, something deeper is broken.
Common symptoms include:
- Briefs arriving late or changing midstream
- Assets being reworked multiple times under pressure
- Sales and marketing disagreeing on priorities
- Promotions being approved because “we have to do something”
Over time, the organisation builds muscle memory around urgency instead of planning. Teams get good at firefighting, not at building repeatable success.
The danger is that leadership starts to confuse speed with effectiveness. Campaigns ship, but no one can explain whether they were the right ones to run, or what should be done differently next time.
Strong CPG marketing does not remove complexity. It absorbs it through structure.
3. Digital and Retail Stories Do Not Line Up
This is a subtle problem that quietly erodes performance.
Your social ads talk about one benefit. The packaging highlights another. Your retailer PDPs emphasise price or promotion. The website tells a broader brand story that no one sees in-store.
Each element makes sense on its own. Together, they feel disconnected.
Consumers experience brands as systems, not channels. When messages are misaligned, shoppers hesitate. Buyers struggle to articulate the story upstream. Sales teams fill the gaps with their own interpretations.
This is often mistaken for a creative issue. It is not.
It is a strategic alignment issue.
When marketing is working, the story holds together from brand to shelf to screen. When it isn’t, effort multiplies but impact fragments.
4. You Cannot Quickly See What Marketing Did for a Launch
Ask a leadership team six weeks after a launch how marketing performed, and you will usually hear one of three responses.
- “It’s early, we’re still waiting on data.”
- “Engagement was strong.”
- “Sales had a lot of variables.”
None of these answers are inherently wrong. All of them avoid the real question.
Did marketing materially help this launch succeed?
In underperforming CPG organisations:
- There is no simple launch scorecard
- Data lives in multiple dashboards that do not talk to each other
- Opinions outweigh evidence
- Lessons are not captured in a reusable way
Without a clean view, launches become isolated events instead of learning engines. Teams repeat patterns without knowing which ones deserve repeating.
Good marketing creates confidence. Unclear marketing creates noise.
5. The Team Is Busy, But Creative Feels Flat
This is often the most emotionally charged sign.
Teams are working long hours. Output is high. Calendars are full. Yet something feels off.
Creative looks safe.
Campaigns feel familiar.
Energy is low.
Leadership starts to question whether marketing is worth the spend. Teams feel defensive rather than proud. Everyone senses that more is being done, but less is being achieved.
This happens when marketing becomes execution-heavy and thinking-light. Without clear priorities and measurement, teams default to repeating what feels acceptable rather than pushing what works.
Burnout follows confusion.
What These Signs Really Point To
If two or more of these warning signs feel familiar, the issue is not that your marketing team is underperforming or that your products are weak.
The issue is that you lack a shared system for how marketing should work.
CPG marketing lives at the intersection of brand, sales, retail, and digital. Without a clear operating model, even strong teams drift into habit and reaction.
This is exactly what a proper CPG marketing audit is designed to surface.
What a CPG Marketing Audit Actually Does
A serious marketing audit is not a critique. It is a reality check.
At CVAC, our CPG marketing audits look across:
- Strategy, target segments, and core messaging
- Campaigns and retailer support
- Digital presence, PDPs, and content
- Media investment and performance
- Measurement, KPIs, and reporting discipline
- How teams actually work together in practice
The output is not a long report that sits on a shelf.
It is:
- A clear executive summary with 3 to 5 real findings
- A shared view of what is working and what is not
- Practical recommendations tied to business outcomes
Most importantly, it gives leadership confidence. Confidence to stop certain activities, to double down on others, and to align sales, marketing, and agency partners around the same priorities.
February Is a Strategic Moment
February is when CPG teams lock plans, release budgets, and set expectations for the year. It is also the last relatively calm moment before execution takes over.
That makes it the ideal time for a structured marketing checkup.
If you want clarity before committing another quarter of spend, you have two practical next steps.
- Book a February Marketing Checkup to get a focused audit and action plan
- Start with our 10-minute Executive Marketing Self Assessment to establish a baseline
Neither option is about blame. Both are about focus.
In CPG, the brands that win are the ones that know exactly what is working and why.